Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media: Beautiful publishing!

Good morning! In case you haven’t seen the news, Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media, Inc., will be partners starting November 30, as described in this joint press release and here (Microsoft Learning’s site) and here (Tim O’Reilly’s blog).

We have a lot of details to work out, of course, but we’re thrilled with this new arrangement because we’ll be able to expand our business, in terms of distribution, topic coverage, and, especially, digital publishing. (If you follow us on Twitter, you’ve seen us making promises about making more headway in digital publishing. We’re about to speed up tremendously!) We’ll also be able to expand our social media efforts.

We aren’t changing the look of our books, and we aren’t moving away from our traditional strengths and our reputation for quality. O’Reilly will handle business operations for us, managing manufacturing, distribution, sales, and marketing, worldwide. Some new Microsoft Press titles will be produced by O’Reilly; others will continue to be produced by Microsoft Press’s team.

We’ll share more details over the coming months. Here’s to the beginning of a beautiful partnership!